New York Rangers coach Alain Vigneault, left, shows the way to the team’s president and general manager Glen Sather after a news conference on Tuesday, June 3, 2014, in Los Angeles. The New York Rangers plays the Los Angeles Kings for in Game 1 of NHL Stanley Cup finals Wednesday. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

LOS ANGELES — Glen Sather used to be at these things all the time, though not lately — not in 24 years, in fact. But Sather, the guiding force of the New York Rangers, seemed perfectly at home at the Staples Center on Tuesday, taking part in media day as his team prepared for Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals against the Los Angeles Kings.

“I’ve been around for a little while, couple of years,” said Sather, who made the finals six times from 1983 to 1990 as the president and general manager of the Edmonton Oilers in the Wayne Gretzky/Mark Messier era and ended up with five championship rings. “I know what it’s like. I know how hard it is to get here.”

He surely does. He has been the Rangers’ president and general manager since 2000, and until now, the best he had done was a loss in the Eastern Conference finals to the rival New Jersey Devils. But now he has taken the Rangers to the final round for the first time in 20 years and his presence lent a certain kind of old-fashioned hockey star power to the proceedings.

In New York, the 70-year-old Sather rarely engages with reporters; months can go by in which he does not speak in public. It is the executive style preferred by the team’s owner, James L. Dolan, who has gone for years without taking questions from reporters. But as Sather demonstrated Tuesday, when he has to speak, there is no problem; he is an affable old pro, jovial and entirely comfortable with being at the center of the climactic event on the hockey calendar.

“It’s really complicated,” Sather joked during the news media session when asked what a general manager does during a championship series. “It took us about three hours to figure out which golf course we were going to play on this afternoon. Then later on this evening, we have the question about dinner, what are you going to watch on TV tonight. Is ‘Game of Thrones’ on? It’s tough.”

On Wednesday night, it all turns serious again, when the puck drops and the best players on the East Coast and the West Coast start going at it. The Rangers will try to win the fifth Stanley Cup in club history, and their first since 1994; the Kings will try be trying for their second title, following up on their 2012 victory over the Devils.

But on Tuesday, the mood was relaxed and reflective. The Rangers’ players strolled to their various assigned places in navy blue golf shirts bearing the team crest and their uniform number.

Goalie Henrik Lundqvist talked about a photograph on the wall at the Rangers’ training center in Greenburgh, N.Y. It was taken at the ticker-tape parade in Lower Manhattan after the 1994 Rangers — a team led by none other than Messier — won the Cup.

“I’ve been walking by that photo every day for nine years,” Lundqvist said. “It’s been my dream for a long time.”

Brian Boyle, a stalwart of the Rangers’ checking line, talked about a turning point in the season, a 4-3 victory over Tampa Bay on Dec. 29. The Rangers were 18-19-2 going into that game and 27-12-4 after the intense team meeting that preceded it.

“There are emotional speeches, and there are times when you have to look yourselves in the mirror — this was a little bit of both,” Boyle said. “That was gut-check time for individuals and for us as a team, and I think we responded very well.”

Later, when it was time for the Kings to talk, their coach, Darryl Sutter, talked about Sather, as did their general manager, Dean Lombardi.

“Glen Sather grew up as a boy in our hometown,” said Sutter, who is from Viking, Alberta. “A lot of respect for Glen, as Dean said, over the years we’ve known him, on the ice, off the ice. He’s the whole deal.”

Meanwhile, Sather was even willing to publicly reflect on Dolan, his controversial and often derided boss, who has stuck by Sather through the years even as Dolan’s other team, the New York Knicks, has often been mired in chaos and bad basketball.

“I enjoy him,” Sather said of Dolan. “I think he’s an interesting, complex, caring human being who is probably a little bit apprehensive at letting himself be known by the media. Most people like that are. You have your own private life, your own world that you live in.”

Although Sather had his own spell of futility with the Rangers, he has been making the right moves in recent years.

He picked up Ryan McDonagh from Montreal for a song and watched him become his top defenseman. He traded Marian Gaborik to Columbus for three useful players — Derick Brassard, Derek Dorsett and John Moore. He fired John Tortorella as the coach and hired Alain Vigneault, and it took Vigneault all of one season to reach the finals.

Now the time has come for Sather to sit back and watch what happens. As he and Vigneault left the podium Tuesday, Vigneault laughed about Sather’s having done most of the talking.

Sather laughed, too. “I hope this is it for me,” he said. But if the Rangers can win the Cup, he will surely have more to say.

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